Fun at School

Mom and little boet volunteer at a little school on a Friday (which means I get roped in to do cutting, designing, shopping, etc on a Thursday afternoon! and taken along whenever I'm free). It has been great fun coming up with educational art or craft projects for the kids. We're dealing with kids who come from severely disadvantaged backgrounds most of whom have alcohol foetal syndrome to contend with which makes most of the crafty stuff we've done at home way too difficult.

We've made pompoms which they loved but unfortunately there is no real use for a pompom other than the skills learned making it... The kids also get distracted really quickly which means getting them to finish anything is a real challenge!

We wracked our brains for days wondering what we could make with these precious little people that would be both beautiful and functional this is the project we came up with:

Mosaic Mirrors:


We had a piece of supawood cut into pieces 30cm X 20cm and bought ready cut mirror tiles which we stuck onto the boards using double sided tape. Next we went to Pudlo Tiles in Salt River and dug around in the scratch patch (which we've decided we'll take the kids along to do themselves as an outing). The kids were given carte blanche to choose their colours, designs and tile sizes - some of them were very systematic and others were just interested in filling the available space with little tiles :-)

We helped them stick the tiles down using a quick set tile adhesive (we finished the ones that they struggled with at home so everyone was on the same page by the next lesson...). The final touch was by far the most messy and the most fun: grouting! The pictures below are of the children's faces in their completed mirrors... Some of them have never seen themselves in a mirror before which was heart breaking. Some reacted with joy and smiles whilst others were absolutely terrified... it took much coaxing to get them to look at themselves. Some of them were brave enough to pull faces and identify their noses, teeth, etc... I think the mirrors are quite stunning! We're adding hanging paraphernalia and sending them home next week :-) We've cleaned off the excess grout so they can see their faces clearly in their pretty mirrors...